“Oh no, only when he comes to town. They don’t ask us now to the Palace, for I am sure he never can make up his mind about father, whether he is a real saint or—the other thing. Aunt Rose is the relation you know, not the bishop. It is by mother’s side, so they naturally disapprove of papa.”
Evelyn did not at all know how to deal with this girl, who was so cognisant of the world and all its ways. Rosamond was even more a woman of the world than Madeline Leighton. She believed in less, and she seemed to know more, and her calm girlish voice, and the pearly tints of her infantine radiance of countenance produced upon the middle-aged listener a sensation of utter confusion impossible to describe. She asked hurriedly, with an endeavour to divert the easy stream of words to another subject, “Have you any friends of your own age, my dear, to amuse yourself with?”
“Oh plenty,” said Rosamond, “quantities! There are such crowds of girls; wherever one goes, nothing but women, women, till one is sick of them. I have a very great friend whom I see constantly, and who is exactly of my way of thinking. As soon as we are old enough we both mean to take up a profession. I have not quite decided upon mine, but she means to be a doctor. She is studying a little now, whenever she can get a moment, and looking forward to the time when she shall be old enough to put down her foot. Of course they will try to forbid it, and that sort of thing. But she has quite made up her mind. As for me, I have not such a clear leading as Madeline. I am still quite in doubt.”
“Madeline,” said Evelyn. “I wonder if by chance that is Madeline Leighton whom I saw the other day?”
Miss Saumarez nodded her head. “But you must promise,” she said, “not to betray us to her mother. Of course we quite allow that we are too young to settle upon anything now. She is only seventeen. I am nearly two years older, but then, unfortunately, I have not the same clear vocation. And of course something must be allowed for natural hindrances, as long as father lives.”
“I hope you will never leave him,” said Evelyn warmly. “It is true I am old-fashioned, and do not understand a girl with a profession; but everybody must see that in your case your duty lies at home.”
“If anybody who was a very good match wanted to marry me,” said the girl with a laugh, “would you then think that my duty lay at home?”
Evelyn felt herself reduced to absolute imbecility by this bewildering question. “My dear—my dear—you know a great deal too much; you are too wise,” she said.
“But that’s not an answer,” said Rosamond; “you see the logic of it, and you daren’t give me an answer. You just beg the question. I must go away now; but father told me I was to ask you if I might come again.”
“If you care to come to such an old-world, old-fashioned, puzzled person as I am,” said Evelyn, with a troubled smile.